"Compassion followed me into the bathroom. I
wondered for a fraction of a second whether I'd unwittingly melted the icy
block of her indifference. She was pretty, in a cheeks-and-freckles kind
of way, and I'd hardly considered her as a partner before but, hey, I wasn't
going to be choosy. I was supposed to be supportive, to show her my human
side, so I was quite prepared to show her the entire thing."
This Doctor Who novel starts off in the manner of a Bond
movie - the Doctor performing daredevil stunts whilst pursued by hired
grunts on skis. There are even blood-red fisheyes. The only
thing missing is the theme music, although the adrenaline of the prose more
than makes up for it.
The TARDIS has been drawn to the planet
Drebnar, home of the Frontier Worlds Corporation. The Doctor is
determined to find out why, and so Compassion and Fitz become employees of
Frontier Worlds. Whilst Compassion dedicates her time to spying on the
company, Fitz dedicates his to spying on and seducing his female
coworkers. But the TARDIS crew are not the only aliens to have landed on
Drebnar. Before he knows it, the Doctor has become embroiled within a
corporate plot of Frankenstein proportions, which even involves Frank Sinatra,
seemingly back from the dead. Unless he succeeds, an entire system could
be wiped out by human folly...
Following in the wake of Lawrence Miles'
Interference, this is another very topical Doctor Who novel. The
debate about what we eat and how it is produced is at the heart of our
culture. Anghelides has displaced the debate by setting it on an alien
planet. However, Drebnar is not exactly unlike Earth, and it could be
possible to argue that the author has revealed a great lack of imagination by
not bothering to provide much of an alien environment. Possible, but
futile. Much of Drebnar's fun derives from the fact that it is so
much like Earth. Okay, so this scenario is quite improbable, but since
when has that been a handicap to Doctor Who? Especially when the Doctor has
foes who delight in such paradoxes...
I suppose the television story which most
resembles this is The
Seeds of Doom. There's certainly the same amount of vegetation
involved, and the Doctor's just as ready with his fists as Tom Baker was in
that story (always a surprising scene, but then Seeds was written by Robert
Banks Stewart, who later created Bergerac). But, to his credit,
Anghelides makes no reference to The Seeds of Doom, and instead concentrates on
telling his own story, which is highly compelling and very witty. This
book is a joy to read. The characterisation is superb. Before this
book, I've hated the very mention of Fitz Kreiner, because he was so flat and
insipid. Why would I want to transport myself into adventure with a such
a wet blanket? A towel may be crucial to your average intergalactic hitchhiker,
but a wet blanket is such a drag. But what Anghelides has managed to do
seems impossible: he has breathed life into Fitz, given him new vibrancy.
Anghelides does this by having much of the novel narrated by Fitz in the first
person, and so performs miracles. It's a device which works incredibly
well here, and harks back to the very first Doctor Who book, when David
Whitaker presented the Doctor's exciting
adventure with the Daleks through the eyes of Ian Chesterton. It also
helps that Fitz and Compassion are given jobs with Frontier Worlds: many
readers will readily identify with the TARDIS crew's workplace
experiences. Peter Anghelides too has developed his style considerably
from Kursaal, and I shall be awaiting the next installment from his pen
with a great deal of impatience.
Kevin Mahoney. Devaloka Rating: 8/10.
Read
our Peter Anghelides interview
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